Belo Monte Occupation Update | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Belo Monte Occupation Update

May 31, 2013 | Eye on the Amazon

Belo Monte occupation

Peace and Respect
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Urge President Dilma to find a peaceful solution to the Belo Monte conflict and respect indigenous rights!

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A judicial eviction order and threat of violent removal notwithstanding, the Munduruku and other indigenous occupiers of the Belo Monte work camp continue to resist on-site.

We believe that the steadfast nature of the protesters themselves, the national-level accompaniment they have of activists and human rights lawyers, and the international solidarity as manifested through the thousands of action alert emails sent so far are dissuading the Brazilian authorities from carrying out violent actions to try to resolve the situation.

Yesterday was a roller coaster fraught with heightened anxieties and small signs of hope. News came in about another eviction of indigenous peoples in southern Brazil in which Federal Police killed one Terena man and wounded others who had occupied ancestral lands against the wishes of a local rancher who is also a politician. This terrifying news prompted occupation leader Valdenir Mundurukú to ask, “We know they killed one of our relatives in Mato Grosso do Sul today, is that what they will do here?”

In positive news, Brazil’s Presidency sent an official to open dialogue with the protesters. He offered for them to travel to Brasilia to talk, a tactic used in past occupations to first coax indigenous people away from the Belo Monte site and then to hold what amount to meaningless dialogues with them, in which many promises are made and then systematically broken. So the Mundurukú are remaining firm in their insistence that they will only negotiate with the highest level of the Presidency and will only do so at Belo Monte.

A recent article in a Brazilian economic outlet stated that each day of work stoppage is costing the dam consortium an estimated $5 million. Assuming that figure, the current occupation has already cost $25 million, and the costs will continue to rise.

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